General guidance

Dear colleagues,

We invite you to participate in the EIONET and stakeholder consultation of the EEA physical water accounts database v_2018. We kindly ask all invited stakeholders to comment on the database using the online tool before

20 September 2019

EEA ask EEA Member Countries to provide a consolidated country response and only upload one set of comments per EEA member country. EEA´s primary networks are the Eionet NRCs on water (water quantity, water quality and water emissions). Providing comments require an Eionet account.  In case you have forgotten your EIONET Account credentials, you can recover them using this form: http://www.eionet.europa.eu/password-reset. For technical support, please contact EIONET helpdesk at: helpdesk@eionet.europa.eu

The EEA physical water accounts of Europe contains a data set on monthly water accounts at the river basin scale for the years 1990-2015. Each of accounting variable has been prepared in separate excel table for easy use while an access database holds all variables of asset and flow accounts for facilitating an integrated assessment on the products. The spatial reference data is ECRINS river basins (https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/european-catchments-and-rivers-network), which can be used for mapping purposes. A brief background document is also provided for further clarifications on data handling and integration.

You may also find extensive clarifications on various aspects of the developing the European water accounts in two reports published by the European Commission (DG ENV) available at the following links:

Guidance document on the application of water balances for supporting the implementation of the WFD - http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/blueprint/balances.htm

Water ecosystem accounts reports - http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/blueprint/balances.htm

An interactive dashboard has been developed for visualising structure and content of the EEA physical water accounts together with the option for downloading the water accounts database at river basin scale; see the Water accounts dashboard

With this consultation, EEA would like to publish the water accounts database on the WISE for potential use of external experts and interested stakeholders. Should you be aware of the water accounts database that provides homogenous and harmonized set of European data linking environmental information with economy. In this context, the water accounts database fills a large gap in assessing pressures of economy on water resources, efficiency in using the water resources as well as services provided from freshwater ecosystems to the European socio-economic development.

Taking this opportunity, we would like to thank the EEA member countries for providing data to WISE and hope further improvements with data reporting in the years to come.

Based on your comments and suggestions, EEA will make necessary revision with the database -if needed- and publish it on the WISE. Hence, we kindly ask you not to link it in publications or websites until EEA has published them. EEA may remove or change the content of datasets based on the outputs of the EIONET consultation.

We hope you find the database useful and look forward to receiving your comments.

Thank you very much in advance for your cooperation.

 With kind regards


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